Ryszard Kapuściński

Lapidarium

(A Selection)

Translated by Andrzej Duszenko

L

Lapidariumis a place (a city square,
a castle courtyard, a patio in a museum)
containing a collection of stones, pieces of sculptureand fragments of buildings — here a bit of a torso or a hand,
there a piece of a cornice or a column, in a word, parts of a nonexistent(already, still, ever) whole and posing the problem of what to do with them.

Maybe they will remain as testimony of the past, as a trace of trials, as signs? Or maybe in our world, already so grown out, so enormous, and also ever more chaotic and difficult to grasp, to order, everything moves toward a great collage, toward a loose collection of fragments, and so — toward lapidarium?